Guests

Audience Questions

Audience QuestionsHour 1

Pat wants to know if he can use an AppleTV without an Internet connection. Leo says that if he doesn't need to stream anything from the internet, he could still use it in Airplay Mode, or connect it to his network and stream content from there. He may run into some error messages with the Apple TV trying to connect to the internet, though. If he selects any of the internet enabled apps, they obviously wouldn't work. It should work fine within his own network, though.

Leo says to get the Sharp if it's only been there for a few weeks and the warranty is the same. However, Leo does like the Vizio. It would give him a lot of quality for the money.

Open box items like this are typically just bought and returned, and the law says they can't be sold as new. He should make sure that was the scenario, and that it wasn't refurbished by the store. Leo would be careful about anything that wasn't refurbished by the actual manufacturer. It's also important to verify that it's the current model Sharp TV and not the one from last year.

Ed says his display is shifted, and things are not appearing correctly in Windows. Leo says it could be a driver issue. He should try to boot up to Windows in Safe Mode by holding down the shift key or F8 during start up. This will load Windows with basic drivers, including a basic VGA graphics driver. If it looks normal, then he'll know that he has an incorrect driver, or that the driver is set wrong for his monitor. He should download and install the latest display driver and reboot.

Audience QuestionsHour 2

Carole's neighbor was sending email using Hotmail to inform her friends of a new address. After that, she wasn't able to log back into Hotmail. Simply sending mail out on Hotmail will not compromise her account. It's possible that someone did guess her password and compromised it that way, but since she can still access the account from work, that's probably not the case. It's likely a browser issue on her home computer.

Next, a message popped up from Vipre AntiVirus instructing her to call a company called "TechVantedge" that claimed to be affiliated with Vipre. They spend 7 hours accessing the computer, and then charged her $350. TechVantedge claims to be based in New York, but the chatroom did some research and found that they actually are based in India. Leo says that whether this company is legitimate or not, we know that legitimate tech support companies overseas have been known to scam people on the side.

At this point, she should backup her data, then use her system recovery disks and wipe the computer. She should do a full erase and reinstall. She should also call Vipre and ask if they are in fact affiliated with TechVantedge. If Vipre denies they have any connection with this, then she should change her credit card number and dispute this charge.

After she's erased the drive and reinstalled Windows, she should run Windows Update until there are no more updates.

Leo says that PDF Portfolios are multiple files that are put together into one master PDF file. Adobe did this to get a handle on the PDF format, which has pretty much gone open source. PDF stands for "portable document format" and it's essentially an image of a document that preserves formatting across a multiple formats and operating systems.

Now everyone uses PDF. In order to preserve Adobe's business, however, they've started adding extensions to them, like Portfolio. Leo advises avoiding them because it's likely that his third party reader won't be able to read it. He can use standard PDF and even join multiple PDFs into a master PDF file without having this 'Portfolio'.

Audience QuestionsHour 3

Adam's son is heading to college. He has an old MacBook Pro, but it's falling apart and he needs a new one. Leo advises contacting the university, because they'll probably not only give him a better price than Apple, but they may also have a much better support package.

Leo says to wait until August 1st. The new Haswell chipset is out and Apple has already updated the MacBook Air with this. Apple may wait until September, but Leo says to wait until the last minute. If he can't wait, then he should get the current MacBook Air and a nice 27" screen to go with it for his dorm room.

Leo just got back from orientation at University of Colorado for his son, and they said that while it's 90% Mac, students can use either Mac or PC. They said not to bring a printer because they have printing on their network. Printing isn't something that's needed as much though, since students mostly submit things through email. They also require both Macs and PCs to have antivirus installed. If the computer doesn't have it, they would install it. He should call the school though, because these policies will differ.

Nancy keeps everything she's written on her Yahoo documents. How can she back them up? Leo says that they are already backed up by Yahoo.

The only thing she could really run into is if Nancy lost access to her Yahoo account. Leo advises getting a Microsoft Live account at get.live.com and then set it up to copy over to Skydrive. Another option is GMail. She could sign up for a Gmail account, and then have gmail fetch all of her email from Yahoo. Then she'll have all of her emails backed up.

She's also seeing that when she sends out photos, they go out more than once. The chatroom says to delete her "sent" mail files.

Steve is ready to upgrade his Android handset and he's looking between the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Samsung Galaxy Note II. Leo says that the resolution on the Note (1200x800) is lower than the SIV, but it has a bigger battery. The SIV has a smaller screen, but at 1920x1080, the resolution is better. The SIV is more powerful, but the battery life is less than the Note. The camera on the SIV is excellent.

The Note III could be out any time now, though. Leo says that most will let him buy it, and if he doesn't like it, he'll have up to 2 weeks to return it.

John got a pop-up for the FBI MoneyPak scam. Leo says that's exactly what it is. The FBI doesn't sell a get out of jail free card for the cost of a MoneyPak card. Hackers, however, are making billions on it. Not only are they making money, they've locked up his computer as well.

Leo says it's ransomware and he can rid of it. They use a trojan called RansomLock that will lock down the machine until he would send them money. So he should make sure his operating system is updated. It may be a virus that came through Flash, Java or a PDF file that launched Adobe Reader and installed it.

Bleeping Computer has a solution that could help, but Leo says it's only going to work in limited situations. So, the only real way to get rid of it is to backup his data, format the hard drive, and reinstall Windows from a known good source.

Stanna wiped her old computer and reinstalled Windows XP with dual partitions. Now, it just shuts down on its own. Leo says that it's likely a hardware problem, potentially a power supply. If she's getting beeps when she turns it back on, that's a "post code," and the number of beeps tells her what the problem is. Just search the number of beeps on Google. Given the age of the computer, it's probably time to get a new one. She could pay to have it fixed, but at that age, it's not really worth it.

Guest appearances

This Week in Tech News

T-Mobile has announced that it is launching its own Android phone called the REVVL, made by Alcatel. The phone will have a fingerprint sensor and cost $125. Leo says that security patches must be done regularly or saving money on a house phone simply isn't going to be beneficial.

Consumer Reports has been seeing poor long term reliability in the data they are collecting from readers on Microsoft's Surface line of products. It's so bad that they've downgraded their recommendation to "Do Not Buy." Leo says that long term reliability is something that Consumer Reports goes to great expense to analyze and that they're probably on the money with their decision.

Wired Magazine is reporting that hackers have managed to encode a computer virus into DNA, which can then infect any computerized instrument that is used to analyze the strand. If hackers are now creating malware in our DNA, how can it be fought? Fortunately, though, it's not a very practical or widespread application. Yet.

This week, the US Army issued a directive ordering soldiers to not use DJI drones and other UAVs due to cyber vulnerabilities and the potential for spying by the devices on the battlefield. DJI is shocked by the move without consultation. What would be the threat? Leo says that drones have radios and GPS, and often have internet connectivity. So it's possible that drones could be taken over by a third party and used for spying, especially for mapping terrain. But Leo says it's also likely there's could be a certain amount of paranoia at work here. The Army may know something we don't though because of the risk associated with battlefield operations. But could DJI drones spy on us? Leo doesn't think so. Your mobile devices and "internet of things" can be more of a threat.